When You're Ready To Take Your Xsan To The Next Level, Let's Talk About StorNext FS!

Without having to buy new client software for each seat of your Xsan implentation, you can dramatically increase your entire SAN's performance by a switchover to StorNext FS....

If you’ve got an Xsan implementation, wouldn’t you like your SAN to be more flexible, faster, more cost-effective, more scalable, and provide you with better tools to manage your content?  By implementing StorNext File System (FS) and Storage Manager, all of this is possible, and more!

Platform-Agnostic Storage

If you’ve implemented an Xsan system for you facility, no doubt there have been some frustrations based upon Apple’s requirement to use ONLY their products.  The first of these is that Apple requires you to purchase only the storage that they have approved: previously, this was their Xserve RAIDs that only functioned at 2Gb Fibre Channel speeds and were based upon less-than-optimal RAID controllers from Osprey;  currently they only approve Promise Technologies RAIDs and at prices that are higher than the “non-Apple-approved” versions available from Promise resellers (such as Audio Intervisual Design). If you attempted to use any other products, Apple would not support your installation because you had integrated “non-approved” products.  For storage, Audio Intervisual Design represents a wide variety of vendors (IBM, Infortrend, HP, Arena MaxTronic, G-Technology, FibreNetix, Promise, etc.) and we can help you choose exactly what suits your needs.  The right bandwidth, the right price point, the right feature set.

With StorNext FS, choose from any of these products and more, so that you have increased flexibility, scalability, and investment protections.

Platform-Agnostic MetaData Controllers

In addition to Apple-only storage requires, Apple required you to use their Xserve products with OS X for the metadata control (MDC) servers. While Apple manufacturers a wonderful line of products, servers and storage are not their key technological focus.  Why not make use of the wealth of server technology (from companies like HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, etc.) and operating systems your IT staff already know intimately (such as Linux, Windows, UNIX, etc.) when implementing the MDC servers for your Xsan?  And for storage,

With StorNext FS, whether you want your MDC servers to be HP, IBM, etc., your choice.  Whether you want them to run Linux, UNIX, or Windows, your choice. 


Improved Disk Handling

Apple’s Xsan uses a general “unified cache”, which handles all sorts of communications via that single buffer.  StorNext uses a “buffer cache” which is dedicated to disk I/O transactions exclusively.  This means that reads and writes to the shared storage are faster, as the cache is not being filled with data that is extraneous to read/write performance. 

By switching to StorNext FS, you’ll get increased performance with your storage pool while still using the same storage and the same clients.

Server-Based Licensing Saves You Money!

Instead of purchasing an Xsan license for each Macintosh that’s physically connected to your SAN, whether that system is turned on or not, StorNext FS makes use of server-based licensing.  This gives you greater flexibility, allowing more clients on your SAN for less money, limited only by concurrent access.  As an example, if you had 10 systems but only used 5 on any given shift, with Xsan you’d have to own 10 Xsan licenses.  With StorNext FS, since only 5 systems needed access at a time, you’d only need 5 licenses.

With StorNext FS, just pay for what you need!

Enterprise-Level Content Management with Storage Manager

StorNext Storage Manager introduces tiered storage to Xsan and Final Cut Server environments, providing transparent, automated movement of content between tiers of storage, including primary and secondary disk (such as FC and SATA-based disk arrays) and data tapes. This allows you to have the content you need right now on the fastest storage in the system, and be "online". When you're not using that content actively but it still needs to be available, in can be moved to your not-quite-so-fast storage and hence be "near-line". In addition, Storage Manager has the ability to create multiple copies and versions of stored content, thus providing a simple and efficient data protection solution.  Storage Manager is responsible for automated and transparent data movement as well as management of the tape or disk storage devices where data is retained.

By leveraging multiple tiers to store content on the most economic storage technology at any given moment in time, StorNext and Storage Manager can dramatically decrease the cost of keeping digital assets available to users and applications.

If you'd like more information about how a Quantum StorNext FS installation can improve your workflow and save you money, contact us:

Audio Intervisual Design
1155 N. La Brea Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90038
(323) 845-1155
sales@aidinc.com
www.aidinc.com